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Chapter 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Vicar of Wakefield, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Humility in the Face of Adversity
The Possibility of Redemption
Family and Society
Equality, Justice, and the Law
Travel, Home, and Belonging
Summary
Analysis
The Primroses’ new home is a small country neighborhood neither rich nor poor, where the peasants are pious and hard-working—but also prone to festivals. The neighborhood holds a feast for their arrival and provides the family with a small and cozy if unpretentious farmhouse. Every morning, the family rises, and Dr. Primrose leads them in prayer. After that, they go about their business. In the evening, they gather around the fireplace together, often with guests like their neighbor Flamborough. The Primroses sing and share their famous gooseberry wine. The first Sunday in their new home scandalizes Dr. Primrose, as he finds Mrs. Primrose, Sophia, and Olivia elaborately dressed and made up. He chastises them for their vanity, and from then onward they revert to more plain and simple clothing.
While the novel has not described the Primroses’ home at Wakefield at length, the reader can assume that there the Primroses lived in wealthier, more cosmopolitan conditions than they do on the Thornhill estate. Nevertheless, there is a simple comfort to the peasant lifestyle and, to Dr. Primrose, a deep foundation of basic moral goodness. Ultimately being of unambitious rural origins themselves, the Primroses quickly settle into their new home. Indeed, the most jarring elements of their adjustment, to Dr. Primrose, are not caused by their peasant neighbors and parishioners, but by Mrs. Primrose and her daughters’ attempts to distinguish themselves from their neighbors through fancy dress.
Themes
Literary Devices
